The Missional Doxology of the Philippian Hymn
It is so important to grasp the meaning of 'humbling ourselves' like Jesus.
In an essay, first published IBTS's
Baptistic Theologies 2 years ago, I contended that the Philippian hymn is best understood as a missional doxology, celebrating both the nature of God and the participation of Christian life in the life of God. In drawing on recent developments in New Testament Studies with some insights from Trinitiarian and missional perspectives on the Missio Dei.
I have revisited what I wrote then and am fully persuaded that the Biblical truths contained in
Philippians 2.1-11 are seminal in grasping a baptistic understanding of mission and ministry today. This is what is found below. The fuller text, with proper Greek fonts, is found in the IBTS journal. But I trust what is written below might prove helpful to you.
I.a
Recent developments in Biblical Studies
Within New Testament Studies, recent research into Second Temple Judaism has yielded important insights into the contextual background of early Christian writings. Richard Bauckham argues that Jesus Christ, within the context of the strong Jewish monotheism of the first century CE, is to be identified not simply as a messianic figure, but as a bearer of the divine identity: in Jesus Christ of Nazareth the revelation of the divine identity of the God of Israel is both present and fully explicated. Moreover, Bauckham insists that a failure to recognise the priority of this Christological profile, so often superceded in modern theology by the worldview of Nicea and the 4th century CE debates, has actually debased our appreciation of a high, New Testament Christology:
The earliest Christology was already the highest Christology. I call it a Christology of divine identity, proposing this as a way beyond the standard distinction between ‘functional’ and ‘ontic’ Christology, a distinction which does not correspond to early Jewish thinking about God and has, therefore, seriously distorted our understanding of New Testament Christology.
A complementary strain of studies has been rooted in a creative discussion on the nature of justification. This has recently focussed in a debate between two eminent churchmen, John Piper and Tom Wright, and a recognition that the nature of the Atonement embraces understandings of righteousness in the New Testament that are complex, giving rise not only to an understanding of imputed righteousness for the believer but also participational righteousness as an expression of our faith and life in Christ. The rediscovery in Pauline Scholarship, that Paul offers more than a forensic understanding of atonement, presents a richer and deeper perception of the Christian life that resonates with the orthopraxis called for in the Gospels. This is further evidenced in Michael Gorman’s seminal study of Pauline perspectives on conformity to Christ, Cruciformity. Gorman has since further developed his understanding of the Apostle presenting the Christian life as cruciform conformity to Christ:
it is conformity to Christ, or holiness, understood as participation in the very life of God – inhabiting the cruciform God.
We will observe how both these areas of discussion, the divine identity revealed in Christ and the way in which God saves us through Christ, bring fresh insight to our reading of the text.
I.b
Recent developments in Trinitarian Studies and the Missio Dei
There has been something of a renaissance in Trinitarian theology in recent years, partly due to the growing influence of Eastern Orthodox perceptions of the Trinity among both Pentecostal thinkers and others concerned to explore and bring fresh emphasis to social and personal identity. Western interpretations of an Immanent Trinity have been further developed by employing a perichoretic metaphor, originating in the early fourth century in the Eastern Trinitarian thinking of the Cappadocians, in seeking to find a paradigm for social and interpersonal action among human agents. Where this more Eastern perspective has been combined with the Western theologian Augustine’s employment of analogy in speaking of the Trinity, analogical comparisons and models have arisen. These models are based on a perception of how the Persons of the Trinity interact, translating this into how human social and personal identities can be affirmed. This approach stands in some tension with alternative approaches, which have stressed the actualisation of the Triune economy and the becomingness of God in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The distinction and the question of balance between Immanent and Economic models of the Trinity impinges upon a missional question. In that we speak of mankind as bearing an image of God, the Imago Dei, is this to be rooted first and foremost in a Trinitarian understanding, whereby we describe mankind as Imago Trinitatis, or Christologically, where we are fashioned Imago Christi? Moreover, in so far as it is legitimate to speak of God’s mission (Missio Dei), to what measure can the Philippian Hymn support the thesis that it is legitimate to speak of our engagement in the Missio Dei? These questions will be in our reading of the text, and will be returned to in the final section of the essay.
II.a
Issues affecting the interpretational tradition of the text
Before coming to the text, we should recognise major interpretational themes and assumptions that have dominated scholarly commentary on the passage in recent years. The prevalent theory since the early twentieth century has been that the passage contains an embedded psalm, the Philippian Hymn, and that this Hymn, Pauline or pre-Pauline, expresses core convictions that Paul owned concerning Christ. Moreover, the Hymn has sufficient challenges in both its Greek vocabulary and the way the text is structured to have generated a rich and varied interpretative tradition, which has been forged in twentieth century discussion by two questions. Firstly, ‘what does the hymn celebrate?’ That is, is it primarily ethical, Christological or soterial in its focus and intent? Secondly, given that debate has been characterised by much discussion on the Christology of the Hymn, a further question arises: ‘what are the Christological concerns and typologies present in the hymn?’
Due to this second, Christological question, much scholarly debate has been founded on the key concept of kenosis found in verse 7, together with associated questions of ontology arising from the previous verse 6. All of this has been set against a wider theological backdrop that has brought into question both the meaning and the relevance of ontological definitions and categories arising from Trinitarian statements in the Nicene Creeds of the fourth century CE and the Christology of the Chalcedonian Creed of the fifth century CE. Until recently, what appeared to be missing in most Pauline studies was an engagement with the Gospel as the Gospel of the kingdom of God, as expressed in the narrative and Jesus’ teaching within the four Gospel accounts. Also missing was any reflection on whether the Hymn invited engagement with the four Gospel accounts. While the Hymn most certainly invokes ethical, Christological and soterial reflection, could it be that the Hymn is better understood when set in the context of Paul’s awareness and concern for the advance and full advent of the kingdom of God: a central focus for both Jesus and the Gospel narratives?
At a popular level, dispensational teachings and their influence together with an idealisation of Jesus’ teaching as represented in the quest for the Historical Jesus had driven a wedge between Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God and a focus on soterial aspects of Paul’s teaching, especially on their forensic and penal aspects. More recent and well applied New Testament scholarship has sought to overcome this gulf. Such mediating scholarship is well represented by Bird, who views the Hymn as ‘fundamentally an ethical exhortation towards humility and self-giving rather than comprising an exercise in Christological speculation’; whilst Gorman views Paul as inviting us, together with all disciples of Jesus Christ, into an identification with Christ that is shaped by an embrace of his cruciform identity, detecting in Paul’s rendering of the Hymn, a ‘counterintuitive kenotic and cruciform identity of God displayed in Christ’.
Gorman’s stress that the Christian disciple is called into cruciform conformity to Christ leads us into another convictional question that affects what commentators bring to discussion of the text. To what measure can Christians conform in their humanity to the humanity of Jesus Christ? A conviction that sinful flesh can never share in the same humanity as the flesh of Christ is common within the Western tradition. Such a prior conviction will not readily allow an identification of what Christ has done with what the sinner might do unless there are alternative convictional templates that can be brought to bear.
One such template might be offered in Bauckham’s work. For Bauckham, the Hymn highlights the contrast between ‘high and low status, exaltation and humiliation, honour and shame’. This contrast, present in Christ’s manifestation of the divine identity, brings us to a deeper and fuller appreciation of the nature of God Himself. Citing the Mosaic theophany of Exodus 33-34 and the way that John’s Prologue relates the revelation of the Word in the Incarnation to the identity of the God of Israel, Bauckham explains,
God’s gracious love, central to the identity of the God of Israel, now takes the radically new form of a human life in which the divine self-giving happens. This could not have been expected, but nor is it uncharacteristic. It is novel but appropriate to the identity of the God of Israel.
Here, a complementary perspective can be offered in re-evaluating whether there is any Trinitarian theology implicit within the Hymn. Just as Bauckham contends that this early, New Testament Christology is already the highest theology, it can be reasoned that there is already a dynamic, Trinitarian formulation present in the Hymn. We would argue that this is in fact the case. Further, we would contend that such representation of the economic actualisation of the One God’s presence is profoundly more Trinitarian than later, Nicene attempts to differentiate and affirm in ontological terminology. Gorman’s explication, that God is revealed in the three, interconnected realities of ‘the narrative identity of Christ the Son, the essential character of God the Father, and the primary activity of the Spirit’, offers an exciting way of interpreting Trinitarian presence in terms compatible with Bauckham’s stress on divine identity found in Christ. We will return to this later, when we argue for an understanding of the Hymn as a missional doxology.
II.b
The Text
Verses 1 - 5
While the Hymn proper is identified as the pericope of verses 6-11, we will deal with it as an embedded component in the context of the surrounding verses. The exhortative character of Paul’s address to these Christians is expressed in the preceding verses 1-5. The appeal of verse 1, ei; tij ou=n, invoking Cristo,j, avga,ph, koinwni,a and pneu/ma, has a content that, whilst presented in poetic prose, points to aspects of communion with the God of Israel. The strong monotheism of Second Temple Judaism and the context in which Paul writes does not lead him to express himself in explicitly Trintiarian terms; but referral and appeal to avga,ph, koinwni,a and pneu/ma are all appropriate to Israel’s God and to the Cristo,j as bearer of the divine identity. Likewise, where Paul appeals to his correspondents concerning his own sensitivity and desire that he might have cara, the appeal is to a unitary identity. This might be realised through his correspondents owning a common resolution to share in love, with a unity of soul and common purpose. We would interpret this to be a call to participation in the qualities of God’s unitary character over against being rooted in the arrogant and empty ethics of pagan life (verses 3-4). Certainly, in the bridging verse 5, it is the participatory nature that appears emphasised, evn u`mi/n o] kai. evn serving to stress identification with - not merely imitation of - Christ. The use again of the verb fronei/n in verse 5, following on its use twice in verse 2, suggests that intentionality is here important to the Apostle.
In this opening section, we would discern the genesis of our thesis. Certainly, we note with Bird that the Hymn is not to be viewed simply as a Christological discussion; but we would also moot that it is more than an ethical exhortation. In the language of verses 1-5, we detect a measure of celebration of the very character of God manifest in Christ Jesus, expressed through God’s missional intentionality invested in and among these Christian disciples. If Paul believes it is in Jesus that the unique character of Israel’s God is revealed, and faith involves being rooted in Christ’s identity and aspirations and not simply in decisional and existential reasoning, then verses 1-5 provide a fitting prologue to the Hymn through Paul drawing his correspondents towards an intentionality which they share with the bearer of the divine identity, Jesus of Nazareth.
Verses 6 - 8
The divine identity made manifest in Jesus Christ is revealed both in the self-abasement of verses 6-8 and the exaltation which follows in verses 9-11. Each is complementary to the other in assisting our apprehension of the mission of God, embracing and rescuing humanity through Jesus Christ. That these actions are here presented typologically is not in dispute: among New Testament scholars the presence of both Adamic and Messianic typologies is much debated. However, where these typological allusions inspire ethical propriety and even imitation, do they invite more than that? Is the imitation or participation so engendered to be viewed as an invitation towards imitation of Christ’s human behaviour, or might it be even an invitation to participation in the very life of God? As we have noted, Bauckham’s emphasis on questions of identity, rather than ontology or function, leads us to a Christology that views the manifestation of the divine identity in this man, Jesus Christ. Where does this in turn take us? Is this a call to ethical imitation or more than that, an invitation both to celebrate and to participate in the dynamic life of God? We will now seek to engage with the text of the Hymn as it relates to these issues in this section, going on to appraise them more fully in the third section of the essay.
The first aspect of verses 6-8 we would note is the intentionality expressed through the two active aorist verbs, evke,nwsen in verse 7 and evtapei,nwsen in verse 8. Further, where these verbs indicate the active intentionality of Jesus, their object, in both cases e`auto.n, serves to stress the voluntary, intentional aspect of Christ’s action and expression as bearer of the divine identity. It is the deliberate and volitional intent of Jesus Christ both to ‘empty himself’and ‘humble himself’.
Central to our understanding of the text is the meaning and usage of kenosis, or ‘self emptying’, in verse 6. Here it is the verbal form of kenosis that relates the identity of Jesus Christ ‘in the form of God’ to ‘(in the) form of a slave’. Here, it is the whole of God’s identity being expressed and entering into the identity of a servant that is associated with Jesus Christ. Following Bauckham’s plea that we focus on identity, rather than ontology or function, we will avoid discussion as to whether this is the ‘divine’ or ‘human’ aspect of Christ under discussion. We will not interpolate into the text a fifth century CE, Chalcedonian definition or even mindset connoting ‘two natures’ in Christ, whether human and divine. Likewise, we should note that Paul does not reduce the divine identity into personal Trinitarian terms, whereby particular association with any particular hypostasis of the God’s triunity is emphasised. Here, the reference is simply to Jesus Christ, the full bearer of divine identity and possessor of divine status; to the whole of Him entering into the whole of a servant identity.
Bauckham’s exegetical point is that the Hymn is an interpretation and application of Deutero-Isaiah Messianic typology, but this predicates a critical theological conclusion: that what is being spoken of here is not simply the unique identity of Jesus Christ, but the unique identity of the God of Israel:
The God who is high can also be low, because God is God not in seeking His own advantage but in self-giving. His self-giving in abasement and service ensures that his sovereignty over all things is also a form of his self-giving. Only the servant can also be the Lord.
A further, complementary understanding of Jesus Christ serving as both the paradigm and the catalyst for human participation with the very life of God Himself is developed by Michael Gorman. For Gorman, kenosis also is a manifestation of God, not only of Christ. God is possessed of an essentially kenotic and cruciform character:
It is especially imperative that we see the modus operandi of both incarnation and cross as theophanic. The narrative identity of Christ reveals a similar disposition in his preexistent and his incarnate life: self-emptying and self-humbling. This is theologically important because it demonstrates that for Paul true humanity and true divinity are analogous at the most fundamental level.
The full manifestation of the divine identity is in this Jesus Christ. A repeated emphasis that this is manifest in the very humanity of Jesus Christ is stressed in the text. He comes ‘in the likeness of mankind’ (verse 6) and again, in verse 7, He ‘appears’ to us ‘as a human being’. Here is the highest Christology, the full revelation of God present with us in the very manifest presence of Jesus Christ’s humanity.
We note that this presents us with a huge challenge and warning against any propensity toward discussing mankind as imago trinitatis where that discussion may be detached from this radically Christological starting point and focus. There can be no real Christian theology without the recognition of the unique and complete theophany that is the humanity of Christ. Likewise, any attempt to speak of the identity of Christ, other than that identity of Christ being the manifestation of the identity of the God of Israel, is a declination and a reduction of the high Christology here present.
The declaration and celebration of the theophany that is in Christ Jesus does not, however, conclude with the action of kenosis. Theophany in humanity now affirmed, we are led on to see that this theophany is actualised, in verse 8, in terms of a voluntary, self ‘humbling’ that is expressed in ‘obedience’. If the conception of a missional perspective lies in the preceding verses 1-5, then here in the Hymn proper is birthed the expression of the full, missional dynamic. The ‘becoming’ of this bearer of the divine identity is inextricably woven into the actualisation of divine intentionality through Jesus Christ’s obedience. Furthermore this intentionality is expressed in and through the actualisation of service in obedience.
Taking up the great messianic theme of Isaiah, our human engagement in this missional actualisation lies in the identity of Christ as the anointed servant of the God of Israel. As Christ is called as a servant, so too are we summoned to the attitude and practice – the intentionality – of servanthood. It is through this servant, Jesus Christ, that the God of Israel extends His salvation to the ends of the earth; and it is in the execution of this servant’s task that salvation is effected for sinners. In this Paul is at one with the Gospel writers, directing us to the Messianic paradigm, that we should adopt the very intentionality of Jesus Christ. Here Paul emphasises the participational paradigm in Jesus Christ. It is here, of course, that Paul roots his own identity as an apostle, because he is first and foremost as Cristou/ dou/loj, ‘slave of Christ’.
An integral aspect of Jesus Christ as manifestor of the divine identity lies in His attitude and practice of active obedience to the will of God. An appreciation of this emphasis on Jesus Christ’s willing submission is essential to understanding what we are called to in the will of God. The very essence of discipleship is discipline and conformity to the instruction – Torah – of God to mankind. What is prominent here is the emphasis that God is to be discovered not simply in and through the appearance of Christ as a man, but as a man who is the faithful servant of the God of Israel. The ultimate revelation of God in and through the Incarnation as a manifestation of the divine identity is not to be sidelined but is made complete and is perfected through the servant-ministry of Jesus Christ. There is no greater or more impressive manifestation to be had.
v 9 – 11
If the abasement and humbling of Christ is the birth, the celebration and rejoicing that carries our narrative through to its doxological celebration lies in these concluding verses of the hymn. It is here quite understandable that commentators who affirm the soterial over Christological typologies in the hymn found their argument, looking to the eschatological expectation and telos anticipated.
Yet this second half of the Hymn can also serve to expose a deliberate paradox within the preceding verses. Gorman argues that here we are faced with Paul’s appeal to the counter-intuitive revelation of God with which we are confronted and which we are invited to embrace in Jesus Christ - counter-intuitive because it is contrary to any concept of deity other than one radically restructured in the light of Jesus Christ. Commenting on the preceding verses, Gorman notes,
Although Messiah Jesus was in the form of God, a status people assume means the exercise of power, he acted in character — in a shockingly ungodlike manner according to normal but misguided human perceptions of divinity, contrary to what we would expect but, in fact, in accord with true divinity — when he emptied and humbled himself.
Gorman’s interpretation allows us to see that the exaltation is not simply a vindication of Jesus Christ, but the very manifestation of God as truly God, in terms of His own self-definition. He is God who chooses to demean and debase Himself in order to effect our salvation.
It is this observation that allows us to contest that this Hymn, from its conception, through its birth and now in its celebration, is truly a missional doxology. For we would argue that what we have here is not a rehearsal of a bifurcated Christology that rips apart the coherence of the Incarnate Word, but a celebration of the divine identity of the God of Israel, inherently different and utterly unlike the gods of the Graeco-Roman world which surrounded the first Christians. Here is a God whose manner of self-revelation does indeed demand a counter-intuitive way of understanding. It is counter-intuitive in the way we think of God, a God who comes close rather than remaining far off; but it is also counter-intuitive in the way the Hymn here invites us to see that we are to participate in the missional intentionality of God as the Christ Himself does.
If what is rehearsed here is indeed theophanic, what are its implications? Bauckham is cautious, leaning towards a celebration of what the Messiah has undertaken in terms of Deutero-Isaiah fulfilment, whereby through ‘the career of the servant of the Lord, his suffering, humiliation, death, and exaltation, is the way in which the sovereignty of the one true God comes to be acknowledged by all.’ Bauckham’s focus is upon what is undertaken by God in Christ, not upon our response. Gorman, on the other hand, is clear that this means for us a ‘participation, by means of Spirit-enabled theoformity, in the reality of the life of the kenotic triune God’. The tenability of this thesis lies in the manner in which he links the Hymn with the immediately following section of the Epistle, in verses 12-18.
v 12 – 18
Bird represents a majority view among commentators in opining that the indicative of what has been accomplished in Christ, found in the Hymn, leads to an imperative for the Christian’s ethical response in the following verses. Gorman, however, links the celebration of Incarnation and full participation to connect the verses that follow the Hymn not only as an ethical imperative arising out of the indicative of what Christ has done for us, but a necessary predicate, the ‘community that bears witness to this divine mission ... A people characterized by communal kenosis for the good of the world is both the means and the goal of God's saving activity here and now.’
This stress on intentionality in missional participation, rather than merely imitation of ethical intent, makes sense of the injunction in verse 12, closely partnered to the affirmation of God’s sovereign enabling in the midst of our activity, in verse 13. Furthermore, the allusion to ‘shining like stars’ in verse 15 unmistakeably evokes the eschatological, celebratory anticipation of the same metaphor uses in the apocalyptic imagery of Daniel. Here in the Hymn is a destiny in eschatological fulfilment that in some manner touches us already, as the disciples already shine in anticipation, already participating in the life and mission of God because of their present participation in the life of Jesus Christ.
In pursuing our thesis that the Hymn presents us with a missional doxology, we are attracted by both Gorman’s exposition and the strength of emphasis on participation and what that leads him to. However, we have some reservation arising from how far we can express present, human participation in the divine, without slipping into a confusion of the two. If we were to take the Hymn merely as an ethical injunction, this would not prove a problem to us. But where we have detected a call to missional participation, to what extent can we distinguish present participation in the missional activity of God from complete, full and unqualified deification of our humanity? To answer this challenge, we will turn in our third section to address this question together with others raised in the first section of this essay.
III.
Missional Doxology
We have raised three questions which we now turn to address in this final section of our essay. Firstly, in the first section, we questioned whether speech about mankind as the image of God (Imago Dei) is to be expressed in Trinitarian terms, as Imago Trinitatis; or Christologically, whereby we speak of mankind being formed in the Image of Christ (Imago Christi)? Secondly, in so far as it is legitimate to speak of God’s mission (Missio Dei), to what measure does our reading of the Hymn support the thesis that it is legitimate to speak of our being taken up in engagement in the Missio Dei? Thirdly, in the second section, we concluded with a final question, asking whether we should or could distinguish present participation in the missional activity of God from complete, full and unqualified deification of our humanity? We now turn to reflect briefly on each of these in turn.
Should speech about mankind as Imago Dei be founded in Imago Trinitatis or Imago Christi?
Some may answer, ‘let us have both’! Our question, however, is about subject and predicate. Put another way, if we are to follow the leading of the Biblical canon, should our starting point be with Jesus Christ or with a doctrine of Trinity? Our response, in the light of scholarship we have reviewed in relation to our text, is that it must be founded unequivocally upon Imago Christi. Nowhere in the Early Fathers does an explication of mankind as Imago Trinitatis find expression. This is not to belittle the mystery of God unveiled in and through the person of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, as the present writer among others has argued and demonstrated elsewhere, the understanding of God as a communion of Persons, removed from and construed outwith a contingency upon the theophanic event that is Jesus Christ, is a perception that arises in the fourth century CE at the very earliest.
Moreover, in response to our Symposium’s question, ‘How, if at all, can we be sure that our convictions are of God and not purely human constructions for maintaining positions of power in our world?’, we would observe that the post-Nicene development of a comprehensive doctrine of an Immanent Trinity, described and distinguished as ontologically separated communion removed from mankind, parallels the emergence of Christendom as an expression of political power, going on to develop separated doctrines of Immanent Trinity in politically separated dominions of Latin Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. We would also observe that recent re-emergence of interest and emphasis in stressing an awareness of God as Economic Trinity occurs in a time where the power of Christendom has been weakened and arguably broken. Is this a cause of concern or celebration? I recall an early class in theology, asking a group of young Christians for adjectives to describe God. Their response was to give me the ‘omni’s’: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent - words associated with power and might: human constructions for maintaining positions of power in our world? On the other hand, we have met in our study of the text with Gorman’s appeal to think counter-intuitively. To grasp how Christ, as presented by the Apostle in the Hymn, calls us to view God in a manner that is radically different from the place of power exercised by Caesar, as an earlier call to discipleship invited the Hebrews to see that the God who leads them out of Egypt is fundamentally different in His expression and understanding of power from the Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. Such a God calls us to a counter-intuitive manner of thinking that is not necessarily more attractive to us than convictional constructions that serve to keep others and even ourselves in a place of bondage, oppression, exploitation and control. Gorman’s emphasis on radically orientating our understanding of the Christian life and faith itself around a focus on participation in the very humanity of Jesus Christ has offered us a tenable interpretation of the Hymn that invites us not only to ethical imitation but substantial communion with the God who calls us into His own cruciform identity. Such an interpretation surely invites caution in any move to fashion our understanding of God upon any typological or analogical vision other than that focussed on the cruciform centre that is in Jesus Christ.
Is it legitimate to speak of our being taken up in engagement in the Missio Dei?
John Flett, in his recent study on the relationship of Christian mission to understandings of Trinitarian theology, points to a perceived deficiency in some recent Trinitarian thought, especially in appropriating the Social Trinity and the Cappadocian perspective of perichoresis, in that an idealised reflection on God’s essential nature can lead us to a view of communion with God that relegates mission to second place, separating the act of God’s reaching out through Christ from God’s essential, immanent identity. Mission becomes, by implication, an afterthought. What we are faced with in the Hymn, however, is an emphasis upon kenosis, or Christ’s self-emptying, that draws us into reflecting on what is truly defining of the divine identity. Could it be that Christian mission must involve at its very heart self-emptying and renunciation, because this is what God in Christ undertakes and what God in Christ calls us into? As Flett observes, ‘The question of the missionary act is answered in God’s self-humiliation and his exaltation of the human’.
In seeking to engage with our second question, we must first then ask whether our Christological and anthropological convictions can accommodate an understanding of mission as participation in the very life, objectives and expression of ministry that is in Jesus Christ. As noted, our ability to do this may be impeded by any competing focus on a perception of God that looks firstly to an Immanent rather than Economic Trinity; but it also will be affected if we are convinced, for instance, that it is impossible for a sinless Christ to share in the same humanity as our sinful humanity. In such an instance, we will inevitably encounter difficulty in accommodating a participationalist understanding of communion with God, the Christ and Christian mission itself.
Our response, arising from our reading of the Hymn, is that Christian mission can be nothing other than participation in the mission of Christ himself. It is such adherence to Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit and lived out in submission and obedience to the God of Israel, that releases us into a realisation of the Triune reality of the divine identity that can only be found through being taken up in missional activity in Jesus’ name. As Bauckham notes, in commenting on the narrative of Jesus Christ’s worship by the disciples at the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel,
The scene is a Gospel equivalent to the last part of the christological passage in Philippians 2:6-11. But, whereas in that passage it is the Old Testament divine name, YHWH, that the exalted Christ receives, here the disciples are to baptise “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”(v.19). The formula, as in the phrase “calling on the name of the Lord” which New Testament usage takes up from the Old with reference to baptism and profession of Christian faith, requires precisely a divine name. “The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” names the newly disclosed identity of God, revealed in the story of Jesus the Gospel has told.
The Hymn is of necessity missiological both in content and focus, because the very character of the Triune God is at its heart. Missio Dei meets us and carries us in our humanity into the new creation that we have become in Christ Jesus. It is the engagement of the Creator with that He has created, coming out of the heart of God’s engagement with us. This finds its focus nowhere other than in participation in Christ, embracing us in the powerful practices of his ministry, lifting us up towards eschatological communion in the Triune name.
Can we distinguish present participation in the missional activity of God from complete, full and unqualified deification of our humanity?
The key to answering our final question lies in our concluding response to the second question posed above. If present participation can be inspired in the powerful practices patterned by Jesus Christ and celebrated in verses 6-8 of the hymn, then it also ends there. For in verses 9-11 we are met with inspiration and affirmation of eschatological hope and fulfilment expressed in the exaltation of the One who has fully revealed the divine identity, gathering our humanity to Himself, lifted up to manifest the glory of the God of Israel. In these verses, there is no ethic to emulate or sacrifice to participate in. There is but the wonder of being spectators who taste, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, something of what we intentionally focus on yet wait for in the future coming of God’s Kingdom in its fullest.
The Hymn stands as an invitation to us to participate in the life of Christ, leading us to the place of our baptism into union with Christ in His death. It is a call to present participation thus far. But beyond that? Beyond that we are left in our place of weakness, service and powerlessness to celebrate the victory and vindication of the one whom we adore in doxological joy, awaiting the fullness of His coming. For the present we patiently pursue participation in his path. And then, who knows but God what beauty awaits us or the measure in which our humanity will be transformed?
